Infant car seats are commonly used for safely restraining children when they are driven in motor vehicles. Because of the increased safety they provide, car seat use is now mandated in most, if not all, of the United States. As a result, injuries to infants involved in automobile accidents have decreased over the years.
On occasion, however, using a car seat has resulted in another type of injury to infants. With their child restrained in a rear-facing car seat in the back seat of the car, and with parents busier and more preoccupied than ever, even the most attentive parents could accidentally leave their vehicle while their sleeping child remains in the car seat. The unintentionally abandoned child is then subject to injury from choking, asphyxiation, hyper- or hypothermia, etc. In fact, there have been a disturbingly large number of cases over the last few years of children dying after being accidentally left unattended for too long in their parent's vehicles. By one estimate, more than 150 children died between 1996 and 2001 because they were left in cars unattended.
There are no known devices that satisfactorily overcome this deficiency in the use of conventional car seats. Known car seat-related safety devices include systems for monitoring when the vehicle ignition has been turned off with a child in the car seat in the vehicle, monitoring motion or temperature in the parked vehicle, and monitoring whether the car seat is properly installed. Other known devices include child position and presence monitors. None of these devices, however, have adequately solved the aforementioned problem.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need remains for a car seat-related safety system that eliminates or at least reduces the likelihood of a parent of other attendant accidentally leaving a vehicle while a child remains in the car seat in the vehicle. In particular, there is needed such a system that warns a parent when unintentionally leaving the child in the car. Additionally, there is needed such a car seat safety system that can be used with existing car seats and one that can be manufactured into new car seats. Furthermore, a need exists for such a car seat safety system that is cost and time efficient to manufacture, install, and use. It is to the provision of a safety system meeting these and other needs that the present invention is primarily directed.